To Billow or Not to Billow
by Harriate Slate-Res-Hari-Agnew
Summary: A biography of Severus Snape, told through diary entries, with foreword and messages by Lily Luna Potter. The note from the Author is part of the story.
1. Foreword

**I hope you enjoy this, it's quite short, but it looked longer in my notebook (sorry about the date glitch, I've changed it).**

* * *

To Billow or Not to Billow

_Foreword:_

I never knew Severus Snape, but I have always been drawn to his name, to his lifestyle, to his history.

My father's library inspired curiosity in all my siblings, but it was not the fabulous volumes on jinxes, curses and defence that attracted me. A collection of thin, leatherbound books always drew my eye. I would spend hours in that room, perusing the spines of the books around them, getting closer by the day. Nevertheless, whenever I attempted to shuffle one off the tall, oak shelves, something stopped me. It was as though the book had some strange power over me, but I could never forget it, never banish the wondrous feeling that did a back flip in my stomach every time I even consider opening one of those dusty books (for I had rarely seen my father read them) and scan my fingers down the lines of words I assumed it contained.

Although my father was often busy, he couldn't help noticing the wonder inspired in his youngest child, when her eyes fell on that line of books, for there were a lot of those thin, leather-bound books. Well, I assumed that he noticed. He never mentioned what they contained. In fact, he never mentioned them at all, and the only time he seemed to even confirm their existence was when, half way through a report for the Ministry, when he walked into the room, where I was curled up reading a book, and pulled one of the volumes off the shelf. He flicked through it, muttering phrases under his breath and rubbing his forehead in concentration, his fingers caressing the curiously shaped scar on his forehead. All I saw on the front of the book was the simple word 'Diary'.

It made sense that one of the leather-bound books was a diary, then the rest of them were too. It want the only diary in the library, but my father never really liked us to look at the part of the room where the other diary was contained (I only know this because my eldest brother once managed to break onto his cabinet and extract this old book. According to th date on the stained cover it was over sixty years old, the inside was empty, but there was a large hole which had found its way through all of the pages, and smelt foul, like death. It was splattered with blue ink, and a dark substance, that smelled of the same foul death that came from the hole. The only other significant feature of the book was something inscribed inside the back cover in neat writing: 'T.'. Neither myself or my siblings could tell you who T. was, but where it fascinated my brothers, it repulsed me. I never shared my desire to read the collection of diaries and, although my brothers weren't stupid, they never really paid attention to the dusty collection of scrawled thoughts, and so didn't notice that I did.

It was on my tenth birthday that I finally mustered up the courage to remove the first diary from the dark wood shelf. As id did this, I felt a rush of exhilaration that I could not exactly place. It was almost as though I was meant to pick up this book, meant to scan its pages, meant to peruse this persons deepest and darkest thoughts. It did not take me long to find out that that diary belonged to Severus Tobias Snape, and it appeared he had started to write this diary on January 9 1969.

* * *

**Please reveiw. I love reveiws. **


	2. January 9th 1969

January 9 1969

Dear Diary,

Don't they ever stop fighting? It's constant. And they fight about everything, although there is an obvious trend. Money. Money problems. Who spends the most, who contributes the least? Who stays home to look after me? What money they use; the beautiful coins from my mother's culture, or the dirty things that father takes to the pub. But why can mummy fight back? She just sits in the corner, crying more and more at every one of father's drunken shouts.

If I go out, father will beat me, although it's probably better to stay out of father's way when he's in this dreadful mood. I'm surprised they didn't forget my birthday, and they probably did. This diary is about 50p down the road, and mother's was a trip to Diagon Alley, which I'm looking forward to. I've never been to London before, let alone anywhere magical.

I _am_ going to go out. It's quiet outside, and doesn't smell of the old mill, if I go further out, to the park.

Peace at last. Here I can read, I can write, I can think. But as dusk falls on the park I ca only too well imagine my father searching for me, ready to take his anger out on me, but only finding my mother, trembling in the corner, not daring to raise her wand to the man she still loved, the man she once kept a stash of bottles for him. Bottles of gold liquid, which smelled so sweet, but were smashed underfoot by my father one night. The night they first argued.


	3. January 20th 1969

January 20th 1969

Dear Diary,

I haven't written in my diary for quite a while, it's a difficult habit to keep, but I've left the house for the park again. It turns out that mummy didn't tell my father that she was taking me to London, so I haven't been out of my room all week. They never stop, and now mummy's wand is broken, and father says she can't go back to London to get a new one so soon. I should actually still be in my room, but I can't stay in the house. So here I am, sitting in the snow, frozen to the skin, crouched behind a tree trunk and avoiding the snow balls from that Evans girl, her younger sister and their friends.

I wish they would go away. I hate Muggles, noisy and... OUCH! That hurt. How did they manage to throw a snowball that far? It was the younger girl, how on earth did she manage to throw the snowball that far? And now she's coming over. Hadn't I made it quite clear that I didn't want to talk to... Oh God.


	4. A note from the Author

A note from the Author.

Underneath the diary entry for the 20th of January 1969, the ten-year-old Severus Snape had drawn numerous sketches of startling, emerald green eyes. They had started off very primitive, but had got better and better as he practiced, often spanning whole pages, as though he felt that these eyes better summed up his days than words ever could.


	5. Febuary 28th 1969

February 28th, 1969.

Dear Diary,

After weeks and weeks of constant arguing, shivering in parks and climbing out of windows, it is quiet. There is peace in the house at last. But mummy still cries. Silent, calm tears that chill me to the bone as I see them roll down her cheeks. The slight shudder of her shoulders, and the small gasps once in a while, when the silence finally hits her. She loved him. She still does. But he never loved her. And now she sees that. Hopefully she will cease to love him. Hopefully she will become my mother once again, rather than this shrunken woman, sobbing in the corner. I wonder where he has gone, after here. I wonder if he will ever return.

It started yesterday. My father arrived home late, very late. And my mother stayed up for every hour. Not once did the darkness lull her to sleep. Then, at midnight, the door handle turned, and in came a drunkard. Tall, hooded, a black eye and a bleeding lip were seen when the hood fell. Underneath that roguish skin, I saw a thug, a robber, somebody who could only do harm. And I believed my mother saw the same, she pulled out her snapped wand and pointed it at his chest. She, who had always seen him through rose-tinted spectacles, did not recognise this tall man, his hair, greasy with mud and blood, scratches down his face.

At the wand he only laughed. Stepping forward, he snatched the wand out of her hand. And he looked at the single unicorn hair keeping the two parts together. He pulled out the silver-white thread, and dropped it on the floor, followed by the two pieces of elm. Then he crunched them under his boot. Then he staggered out of the room and we saw him no more. But we did here his heavy footfalls on the stairs, across the landing and into the living room, where he was heard to fall down onto the sofa. Then my mother ran up the stairs, and uttered a single, earth shattering syllable: "Leave!".

Now he is gone, I am fatherless, and I do not know why she did it. It took me a long time to realise who was walking out of our house, sobering by the second, with a bundle of clothes in his arms. It took me even longer to realise my mother had known from the turning of the door handle, had known who broke her wand beyond repair, had known from the second they met what she was getting in to. She had known that he was a Muggle.


	6. Adoption

**Hello there.**

**I would like to inform you that I will not be continuing this story, or anything Harry Potter related *sheepish grin* so I wonder if anybody would be up to adopting a young story, with strong prospects, that the original writer has abandoned, but feels sorry for the people who have reviewed regularly, and set it to their alerts, and even favourited it, who have been abandoned. PM or review if you feel up to it.**

** Your servant**

** Harriate Slate**

**:D**


End file.
